Major ___

Usage examples of leagues.

The story concerned a small group of undervalued professional baseball players and executives, many of whom had been rejected as unfit for the big leagues, who had turned themselves into one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball.

A team that drafts and signs a player holds the rights to his first seven years in the minor leagues and his first six in the majors.

Not until 2007, after he had been in the big leagues for six years, would Barry Zito, like any other citizen of the republic, be allowed to auction his services to the highest bidder.

Billy to rocket through the minors and into the big leagues well ahead of Strawberry.

Chris Pittaro, who made it to the big leagues with the Tigers and won a World Series with the Twins.

In his slivers of five years in the big leagues he played for four famous managers: Sparky Andersen, Tom Kelly, Davey Johnson, and Tony La Russa.

One season in the big leagues he came to the plate seventy-nine times and failed to draw a single walk.

No one had ever heard of on-base percentage, but when your being called to the major leagues depends on your on-base percentage, it gets your attention.

Before the sophisticated baseball fantasy leagues there had been sophisticated table-top baseball games.

When Billy Beane had traded for him in the middle of the 1999 season, Isringhausen was pitching in the minor leagues with the New York Mets.

Taylor, who ceased to be an effective pitcher more or less immediately upon joining the Mets, Billy Beane had himself plucked from the minor leagues for a few thousand dollars a few years earlier.

In Double-A, as in the big leagues, a hitter saw the same pitchers more than once.

Sure, you might get to the big leagues and even have a sensational month or two, but if you had some fatal flaw you were found out.

Hatteberg knew, or thought he did: it happened because the big leagues was a ruthlessly efficient ecosystem.

Once he arrived in the big leagues, teams saw him often enough to find that weakness, and exploit it.